David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Walt Whitman's America, Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson, John Brown, Abolitionist, and the forthcoming Mightier than the Sword: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Battle for America. He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

• INTRODUCTION; PART I GOD'S BOW, MAN'S ARROWS: RELIGION, REFORM, AND AMERICAN LITERATURE; PART II: PUBLIC POISON: SENSATIONALISM AND SEXUALITY; PART III: OTHER AMAZONS: WOMEN'S RIGHTS, WOMEN'S WRONGS, AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION; PART IV THE GROTESQUE POSTURE POPULAR HUMOR AND THE AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE STYLE; EPILOGUE RECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM: LITERARY THEORY AND LITERARY HISTORY; NOTES; INDEX

Impressively informed and heroic . . . An original piece of work that gives the literary canon and its contexts a good shaking.

David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Walt Whitman's America, Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson, John Brown, Abolitionist, and the forthcoming Mightier than the Sword: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Battle for America. He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

• INTRODUCTION; PART I GOD'S BOW, MAN'S ARROWS: RELIGION, REFORM, AND AMERICAN LITERATURE; PART II: PUBLIC POISON: SENSATIONALISM AND SEXUALITY; PART III: OTHER AMAZONS: WOMEN'S RIGHTS, WOMEN'S WRONGS, AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION; PART IV THE GROTESQUE POSTURE POPULAR HUMOR AND THE AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE STYLE; EPILOGUE RECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM: LITERARY THEORY AND LITERARY HISTORY; NOTES; INDEX

Impressively informed and heroic . . . An original piece of work that gives the literary canon and its contexts a good shaking.

David S. Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Walt Whitman's America, Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson, John Brown, Abolitionist, and the forthcoming Mightier than the Sword: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Battle for America. He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

• INTRODUCTION; PART I GOD'S BOW, MAN'S ARROWS: RELIGION, REFORM, AND AMERICAN LITERATURE; PART II: PUBLIC POISON: SENSATIONALISM AND SEXUALITY; PART III: OTHER AMAZONS: WOMEN'S RIGHTS, WOMEN'S WRONGS, AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION; PART IV THE GROTESQUE POSTURE POPULAR HUMOR AND THE AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE STYLE; EPILOGUE RECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM: LITERARY THEORY AND LITERARY HISTORY; NOTES; INDEX

Impressively informed and heroic . . . An original piece of work that gives the literary canon and its contexts a good shaking.